How To Create Content For Your Multilingual Facebook Page

Creating content and engaging a multilingual Facebook community presents many obvious challenges, though none of which are insurmountable.

I live and work in Canada, which means many of the national clients I’ve worked with require that all marketing materials and content for social media be created in English and French. While this can sometimes prove to be challenging, there are a few tips and considerations that can make your life easier and help to sustain the impact of your content, no matter what language it is in.

Facebook provides a tool that controls who can see your posts. When posting to multilingual communities, you’ll want to limit who can view each of your posts based on peoples’ language preferences.

There are a few reasons why this is important; you don’t want to annoy consumers with posts that aren’t in their native language, you don’t want the content your consumers are interested in to be pushed down your timeline, and you don’t want irrelevant content cluttering your consumers’ newsfeeds, which could result in an unlike.

So, how do you control the content that can be seen based on users’ language preferences? Here’s a quick 1-2-3:

Click on the Public button.

How To Create Content For Your Multilingual Facebook Page

Choose to target by location/language.

How To Create Content For Your Multilingual Facebook Page

Type the language that your consumers should speak to view your post.

How To Create Content For Your Multilingual Facebook Page

2 – Take cultural differences into consideration when creating content

Depending on the category in which you compete, there might be cultural differences that you’ll want to take into account when creating content for your Facebook community.

For instance, I live and work in Canada where we have two official languages – English and French. When creating content for French-speaking Canadians, who largely reside in Quebec, it can be helpful to know that they tend to have a much more cheeky, irreverent, and over-the-top sense of humour than English-speaking Canadians. Also, French-speaking Canadians tend to identify more strongly with products and services that have local roots.

Take time to learn the cultural nuances between your consumers who speak different languages, and how you can address those differences to create the best possible content.

3 – Don’t simply translate your content, adapt it

You create your content in language X, and you need it in language Y, so you should just have it translated. Right? Not exactly. A lesson I’ve learned more than once is that it’s not quite that simple. In different languages, there are many words that take on new meaning when they are translated, or contextually don’t make the same sense they do in the native language of your content. This is why it really pays off to have your content adapted by someone who is familiar with the linguistic and cultural intricacies of your targeted consumers. It could be the difference of your content being a hit, or a complete bust.

Do you have any tips or tricks on how to manage and create content for a multilingual social media community?

It would be awesome to chat about your thoughts in the comments, or on Twitter @RGBSocial